revisiting september

the one year mark of callie's accident is quickly approaching. i think for that reason, the days and weeks that started out last september have been revisiting my thoughts. i hope you don't mind my sharing them with you. some of these things may have been touched on in previous posts, but i will repeat myself nonetheless.

it was tuesday october twenty-first and rather than dedicating my thoughts to halloween costumes and jack-o-lantern faces, my mind was distracted with thoughts of my baby sister callie. callie had spent the last fifty-three days of her twenty-one month old life in the intensive care unit of phoenix children's hospital.


it was a miracle that she was there. "there" meaning that rather than grieving her passing i was thinking on her future. because she had been gifted that. to put it more selfishly, we had been gifted that. a future with this beautiful and strong pint-sized girl, whose body's deepest pain and hardest struggle would strengthen and encourage our spirits beyond what we could imagine.

looking back on these days i almost feel as if i was in a dream-like state. i existed. i mothered my then two month old and two year old, i cleaned my home, i fed my family, i went on with life. but i felt as if my life was on hold in a way, as if the world should be on hold. as if everyone should know and understand that in a tiny room in the ICUF a tiny girl was fighting for her life. and that her family and friends {old and new} were praying and pleading to keep her. and while we would have been more than happy to keep her in any form we could, we prayed that she would be completely healed. that she would be whole. we prayed and prayed {and continue to pray} for that.

obviously the world was not on hold, there were countless numbers of people who never heard of our callie. but there was one person and is one person who was deeply aware of her situation. it is our heavenly father. his capacity to love and care for each of us individually is something i could never explain, but it is something that on this day i experienced in such a powerful way. this was not the first time i had felt his love for me so deeply, but perhaps it was the most defining experience as i saw the absolute miracle that was being performed in my sister and simultaneously the healing and comforting that was being performed in myself and my family. and then more broadly, in the lives of those who were touched by our family's experience.

it is impossible to trace where his love begins. we know that it does not end. this was a life changing event. but even those moments in our life when we are dealing with things that may seem trivial to us and others, he is there. he is on hold for us personally. he is not tapping his toes, he is not rolling his eyes. he wants us to come to him. he knows our situation better than we ourselves know it. because he sees what we cannot see, he can rescue us from any situation. and he will. all that he requires from us is faith in him.

i think that is a fair trade.